A city within a city, Museum Plaza is a place to showcase contemporary art, curb suburban sprawl by drawing residents to downtown, and strengthen Louisville’s West Main Street Historic District. When complete, it will encompass some 1.5 million square feet of multi-purpose space in multiple towers, the tallest reaching 61 stories. Shaped by a desire to serve and challenge the city it embraces, the iconic architecture blends
residential, retail, office, education, and leisure activities into a fascinating urban neighborhood.  And it will fund and sustain a center for contemporary art unprecedented in the region.


A homegrown dream

Museum Plaza will be constructed on Seventh Street, between River Road and Main Street, on part of the old Kingfish restaurant site. The city owns the land and is giving it to the Museum Plaza developers.
Wilson and Brown (whose family controls the Brown-Forman liquor corporation) are wealthy arts patrons who are already building 21C, a boutique hotel on the south side of Main Street at Seventh. Poe is a longtime Louisville developer and president and CEO of Poe Companies. He recently developed the 615-room Marriott hotel downtown.
The Museum Plaza building will cost $305 million, paid for with private money and with income from the hotel, offices and the sale of condos and lofts. Poe, Brown and Wilson won't say how much of their own money is going into the project. However, Bob Gunnell, a spokesman for Museum Plaza, called their commitments "substantial".
The investors are asking the city and state to pay for an additional $75 million in public infrastructure improvements at the site, including moving part of the floodwall, redirecting part of Seventh Street, and building a public park and walkway connecting Museum Plaza with the backs of other museums that front Main.
The investors are not asking for a direct contribution from government. Instead, they have requested that the city and state rebate part of new taxes generated by Museum Plaza for the next  twenty  years.
Abramson has agreed to the rebate, he said, and Gov. Ernie Fletcher is considering it.

It's 'hyper-rational'

Museum Plaza's investors -- with the help of David Mohney, dean of the University of Kentucky College of Design -- searched Europe and the United

States for the ideal firm to design Museum Plaza.
They settled on OMA, founded by noted architect Rem Koolhaas and headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Mohney has called Koolhaas

"the best contemporary architect practicing today."
Though Museum Plaza's design appears radical, Ramus, the architect, said it's actually "hyper-rational."
The architectural team concluded that Museum Plaza, in essence, would be one building composed of many smaller buildings -- a city block contained in one structure.

The structure has four legs below the island and three towers above it. All seven structures, each with varying functions, intersect on the island.
Think of it as a chair. One leg will contain the hotel, another lofts, the third a vertical elevator, the fourth the angled glass elevator. Two towers will have luxury condos, the third an office tower. The lofts will be in one of the legs and the museum will be in the "seat."
The University of Louisville is negotiating with the investors about moving its Master of Fine Arts program into Museum Plaza.
The island will be the spot in Museum Plaza where the public will be able to mingle, whether they are residents, university students, office workers or museum visitors.
The island is expected to have several gallery spaces that can expand or shrink as needed for art installations. It also will contain a swimming pool, shops and restaurants; a hotel bar; and entrances to the residential areas and office tower.
The galleries will be able to be altered so they can spill into other spaces on the island, Ramus said. An artist, for example, might want to use the pool for an installation, or the hotel bar as part of an art piece.
Unlike some architectural firms, which design buildings and then try to squeeze in the building's various uses, OMA starts with a building's purpose, then designs everything around it. That's why OMA's designs often don't resemble what many people think of as conventional structures.
A conventional building would not have worked at the site,  there simply wasn't enough space at ground level to put a museum, along with the access points needed for the hotel, condos, lofts and offices.

Funding and construction

Museum Plaza will be built to withstand earthquakes. Will be a very stable and solid structure.
Construction on Museum Plaza is expected to start in early 2007 and be completed in 2010.
A park and pedestrian plaza, also paid for by the city and state, would connect Museum Plaza to the rear of the museums along West Main, including the Frazier Historical Arms Museum, the Louisville Science Center and the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft.
The government would issue $75 million in bonds for the improvements, with the annual debt to be covered by rebating eighty  percent of the new state and local taxes generated by Museum Plaza, Greenberg said.
Brown and Wilson also expect the building to help transform Louisville, in terms of art and architecture, much as new museums designed by star architects have done for other cities, from the Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by Santiago Calatrava, to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, designed by Frank Gehry.
Abramson agreed.


Source : Ocurrir-Journal